Game Trailer Establishing Shots Don't Establish Much
Too many game trailers start with a series of shots where the camera slowly moves through the environment. The problem is, none of these shots indicate signs of player interaction; it's simply the game capture person using a debug camera to fly around the environment. There typically isn't even anything gameplay related within the environment which the audience can use to deduce the game's mechanics. These shots at best say: "Look at how pretty the game is."
Stop doing this.
Okay, I need to qualify this a little bit. These shots are totally okay, but far too many game trailers start with 3 or more of these shots! I've seen some trailers which start with up to 6 or more! Take a look at this example.
Here are the shots which open this trailer:
Windmill or weather vane
Platform floating in the air
Docks floating on water
A glowing tree with some sort of artificial device
Platforms in a cavernous area held up by chains
Flying through structures in a lava filled area
More structures in an ocean environment
In addition to the Switch and studio logos this is 22 seconds of the trailer! The next shot has a small person in the environment which could be a non-playable character or it could be the player, but it's the first indicator the game might be a third person game. The shot after is another environment shot. Finally at 28 seconds we see a familiar looking game camera behind a character running in the environment.
Here's the problem: 27 seconds into the trailer, the game could've been any number of things.
First person puzzle game
First person narrative exploration game
First person shooter or action game
VR puzzle or narrative exploration game
3rd person action adventure game
3rd person puzzle game
Animal Crossing or chill non-combat oriented game
This shot is very pretty, but does it help you understand what genre of game this is?
I could go on, but the point is 28 seconds is a long time for the audience to be wondering what sort of game they're looking at. Mystery can be good in a trailer, but video game players generally have very strong preferences for game genres, and they want to know as soon as possible whether or not a game they're looking at fits their tastes. Pretty environment shots show the art direction, but personally I don't care if a game has the most amazing art direction in the world if it's not a genre I enjoy.
Time and time again I've read comments from people who say they always skip ahead when watching gameplay trailers because so many of them start with logos they don't recognize and slow and/or cinematic intros which don't show gameplay. Again, these shots are not inherently bad, but I think if you're going to start a game trailer with this sort of shot, you should limit it to 2-3 of them before showing some sort of "real" gameplay where the player is visibly interacting with something in the game. Look at this other example for The Sojourn, again, this art is BEAUTIFUL, but you don't know this is a first person puzzle game until a full 32 seconds into the trailer which is only a little over 60 seconds.
Voiceover or story content can help a little bit to make slow tracking shots more interesting, but you can still run the risk of alienating or boring the audience. First person narrative exploration games (derisively referred to as "walking simulators") like Dear Esther and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture aren't everybody's cup of tea, and a lot of first person games will look like one of those games until the audience can see some sort of player interaction. It doesn't even take that much to answer some basic questions about what you'll be doing in the game.
As an example of how editing can make slow tracking shots more interesting, but still not quite enough to really feel satisfying, take a look at this trailer for The Bradwell Conspiracy:
There's a bit of story and ideas conveyed by the shots of the game, and editing of computer screen flash frames, but it's not until 34 seconds in that we get a quote which flat out tells the audience the game is a first person narrative adventure. But even with this, the question still remains: what does the player do to advance the story? After the title card there's some voiceover and some tense first-person footage of a person running through halls, but nothing else indicating what the player does. Do we pick up objects? Do we press buttons?
Now take a look at this trailer for Sunset by Kert Gartner:
This trailer has a lot of slow tracking shots, but there's voiceover of the player character talking about what they're doing, which helps set the scene. Even though the first shot after the date is a slow tracking shot, the shot after shows a sticky note with a task which gets crossed out. This is a simple indicator of something getting done shows player interaction! It says: "In this game you'll do tasks like this."
I don't typically expect the game to show the most interesting player interaction at the beginning, but this shows it's not just walking from place to place without any interaction; I can see the story advances through tasks the player does. The rest of the trailer is mostly slow tracking shots, but the quotes from the press do a little bit more to indicate how the game works. I do wish there were some more shots of the player performing tasks, but I think without the one shot of the sticky note this would be a much weaker trailer.
Okay, so what if you really want to make a slow introduction in your trailer? How can you do it without showing a lot of player interaction, and yet keep it interesting? One good example is this trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
This trailer has a very slow introduction, but it peppers in things which look like they affect gameplay. The second shot shows someone on horseback which indicates it's not a world of empty environments, and the player might even be the person riding. The environments also have some indicators of civilization whether in the form of something like a hut or dock. In other shots there are also living creatures which sometimes seem to be startled or reacting to something nearby. There are also things like ruins which indicate either an ancient civilization or something which was destroyed somehow, prompting us to wonder what happened.
My suggestion for slow trailer intros is for every 1-3 establishing shots, sprinkle in shots with indicate player interaction or things which feel consequential to gameplay. If you can use fewer establishing shots, then that's even better. Or if you can use an establishing shot to say multiple things like in this Breath of the Wild trailer, even better!
This isn't an entirely fair example because since this trailer is for a game with a die hard fan base, so of course the audience is going to want to watch even the most mundane part of the game when they haven't seen any of it before. I still think this trailer does a good job of slowly bringing us in, and showing just enough potential gameplay affecting elements to keep us interested before the "real" gameplay starts when Link jumps off the cliff with his parachute.
This shot seems to be a boring establishing shot at first, but WAIT WHAT'S THAT MOVING ON THE TOP !?
Just one shot or part of a shot showing player interaction or gameplay elements allows you to show more non-interactive bits without frustrating the audience who wants to understand the gameplay as soon as possible. Yes, you might want your trailer to be cinematic and cool, but first and foremost it's there to inform an audience; it has to show them enough about the game to at least let them know whether or not they want to find out more about the game. If watching the trailer doesn't give them a decent sense of what the player controls in the game, it's doing them a disservice, and at best forcing them to do more research.
So please be as judicious as possible with the slow flying shots in your 3D (or sometimes 2D) game, and show gameplay interactions as soon as possible! Your audience won't have to skip ahead, which means they'll watch more of your trailer, and hopefully appreciate how it answered their most basic questions!
